


Reasons Not to be an Idiot

by EdgarAllanCat



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, everyone is fucked up, mentions of abuse, trick or treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 16:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllanCat/pseuds/EdgarAllanCat
Summary: "We are the sum total of our experiences. Constantly. Forever" - Mack AstinKady feels lost, hopeless, and completely helpless in the world. She watches on, wondering if there any way she can help her girlfriend and herself.





	Reasons Not to be an Idiot

                Helpless. The word felt like it was carved into Kady’s skin and forever burned into her brain. It was a feeling that had contaminated the air around her since before she even knew what the word had meant. She had been helpless when her mother was out trading whatever she could offer for spells. It had been there when she was sold to Marina over her mother’s mistakes. When she was at Brakebills the emotion crept through her body with every book she stole. It had made her fly from Brakebills South and hide in the city again. When she ducked under the table, her friends dying around her, it had kept her frozen. It had burned through her veins as she tried to ignore it with whatever sedative she could find. Now, as she sat at the edge of the bed and watched Julia, she could feel it hanging around her, making the air feel heavier with each passing second.

                Kady wanted to run. It was embarrassing and selfish, but she wanted to. The thought only came to her at night. When the darkness crept into the apartment and she lay wide awake in bed, listening to Julia try to fight the demons that visited her in her sleep, Kady thought about running. It was so much easier in the day, when they were distracted and working and they didn’t have to think about what had happened. At night there was nothing but haunting silence occasionally broken by shuddering breaths and pitiful whimpers.  Sometimes Kady wasn’t sure if the muted cries were from Julia or if they were escaping her own lips.

                When she closed her eyes she saw it. She saw everything replay as though she were a ghost caught in a loop. The blood spilling into white clothing and creeping in to stain the wooden floors. Silver’s hair was always so vivid and she wondered why such a small detail stuck with her. When Silver fell to the ground her hair covered one of her eyes, tangling with her eyelashes. Why hadn’t her hair been clipped back that day, Kady had wondered. Silver hated when her hair got into her eyes and she always clipped it back when she was reading or working a spell. Despite all the horrors of that dreadful day Kady always found herself thinking about Silver’s hair and how much she had just wanted to brush it back the way Silver had liked.

                The worst were the sounds. The apartment seemed to echo the memories of the screams as though they were trapped in the walls. Kady could hear them when the lights went out, quiet at first but growing louder the more Kady tried to rest. She wanted to just tear the building apart until there were no memories left to replay. Julia’s voice was always so quiet, like it was struggling to be heard through the tortured wails. Julia screaming as Richard’s beating heart was plucked from his body so easily that Reynard might as well have been picking an apple from a tree. Julia telling Kady to run. Julia’s cries as Reynard knocked her to the ground. Julia repeating the same name over and over again.

                “Kady? Kady? Kady!”

                Her own name no longer sounded like a word. It had become a spell used to trap and torment her, reminding her of her failings.

“Kady!”

Reminding her that no matter what she did or how hard she tried she would always be helpless. She was helpless to save Julia when Reynard had attacked.

“Kady!”

Reminding her that she was helpless to do anything now as Julia struggled with the memories of what happened.

“Kady!”

Foreshadowing that she would be helpless when it came down to defeating Reynard. Her own name made her feel like her only choice, her only chance, was to run again. To give into the helplessness and disappear into oblivion.

“Kady, wake up!”

With a sudden jolt Kady sat bolt upright, blinking in confusion as she tried to remember where she was. Her mouth felt like cotton, the dull, orange glow of light stung her eyes, and her throat burned so bad that breathing hurt. Slowly, her eyes started to adjust and the fuzziness of the room began to sharpen. She blinked several times, trying to clear away some of the sleepy confusion. She was in the kitchen, though she wasn’t sure why. Her arms were folded against the cool, laminated bar and there was a damp spot where her head had been laying. She brought her hand up to rub at her eyes and found that her cheeks were wet.

“Didn’t mean to scare you. You were screaming. Pretty…pretty loud.”

Julia stood on the other side of the bar, looking over at Kady with her lips pursed in concern and her brows knitted in confusion. She was in her pyjamas, the blue button-up set with little white sheep that Kady found stupidly cute. Her robe was halfway on and she wasn’t wearing slippers, making Kady realise that Julia hadn’t planned on getting up. The floor of the apartment was always so cold and Julia was usually freezing anyway. All Kady could think about was getting Julia some socks or something to keep her from having to walk barefoot on the chilly floor.

Kady brushed back her hair, her joints popping as she changed positions. “Yeah, um, I must’ve had a fucked up dream or something. I think there were wolves…or whatever,” she mumbled, too tired to come up with an actual story off the top of her head. “Did I wake you up?” _Duh_ , Kady scolded herself _, that’s a stupid question_.

“No, it’s fine. I, um, I couldn’t sleep anyway. I was reading. Tea?” Julia tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She always toyed with her hair when she was lying.

If they were both going to lie then Kady wasn’t going to point it out. There were some things so obvious that they couldn’t be voiced. “No. You drink weird tea and it smells like liquorice. Just throw some baileys into a cup of coffee. Do we have decaf?” That was it, Kady remembered. She had come into the kitchen to get something to drink, something to take the edge off.  All she had wanted was something to help her block out Julia’s whimpers and the voices in her own head. Apparently she hadn’t made it that far.

                “I’m making cocoa,” Julia said after a moment of pause. She turned her back to Kady and went to pull a pot out of the cabinet.

                Silence found its way back into their lives, twisting with the still darkness and making Kady’s skin itch.  She drummed her fingers against the countertop, trying to drown out the dead echoes before they came. “So…what were you reading?” she asked if only to make noise. Her throat felt raw as she spoke and her voice sounded dry and cracked.

                “What?”

                “You said you were reading. What book was it?”

                Julia hesitated, busying herself in the refrigerator and acting like she was having a time of finding the milk.  “Some, um, some leather bound book. It didn’t really have a title.”

                “Right. Those infamously titleless books. I’ve heard of those.”

                “They exist.”

                Kady rolled her eyes and went to pop her back. Sleeping in a chair had definitely been a poor decision on her part. Her joints ached in protest at having been twisted into an awkward and uncomfortable position for hours, her muscles burned as she tried to loosen herself up a little. Her back felt so tight, so tense, and it wasn’t just from sleeping in the chair.

                As Julia poured the milk into the pot she watched Kady from the corner of her eye, only about half paying attention to the hot stove. Her expression wasn’t clear. She looked like she was caught between irritated, concerned, angry, and, just in her eyes, afraid. “You don’t have to sleep in the kitchen you know,” she reminded Kady, sitting the almond milk on the counter. “You have a bed. I mean, I have a bed and you can…or there’s the sofa. It’s a good sofa for sleeping on. You can take a pillow and---“

                “I didn’t plan to sleep in the kitchen,” Kady interrupted. It wasn’t like she was trying to hurt Julia’s feelings by not climbing into bed with her, it had just kind of happened. She looked around and spotted an empty bottle beside her, picking it up to show it to Julia as though presenting evidence in court. “Magical Methadone,” she said as though that explained everything.  “Weird side effects. It must’ve made me just, like, fall asleep or whatever. Just be glad it doesn’t make me sleep walk.”

                Humming, Julia took the bottle from Kady’s hands and looked at it. There wasn’t much to see in the empty bottle, but Julia stared at it and seemed to see the answers to the universe. “Yeah, it does cause some weird side effects. Usually insomnia. That’s why you take the Trazodone at night.”

                The accusation in Julia’s voice hurt, but Kady tried not to let it show. She shrugged and looked down. “Okay, so I got it confused and took one medicine instead of the other. Shit happens. Point is, sleeping in a chair all night wasn’t my plan.”

                “Hmm, right, okay.” Julia’s forehead wrinkled in thought as she followed Kady’s logic. “So, you took the medicine that makes you stay awake and it put you to sleep?”

                “Yeah, that’s what happened. What?  Do you think there was more to it than that, detective?”

                “Actually, I do.”

                “That’s great, keep you theories to yourself. It’s late, I’m tired, and my back hurts. Let’s just make…whatever you’re making and go to bed, okay?”

                If only it were that simple. But things were never simple with Julia, especially not problems. Julia was the best and worst kind of person in that if something was wrong she would address it and try to fix it. This was great for things that could be fixed, but highly unfortunate for problems with no solution. “Kady, do you even want to go to bed with me?”

                Oh no, she wasn’t having this conversation. She didn’t want to do this, not in the middle of the night, not ever. Julia was tired and emotional and Kady didn’t handle either of those things well. “Julia, don’t be stupid.”

                “I mean, I know that I’m not exactly the most…the most affectionate person in the world right now. I know I’m not…things aren’t the way they were before—“

                “Julia, you’re being stupid.”

                “Look, it’s fine if you can’t do…whatever it is that we’ve been trying to do. Just tell me and don’t lie to my face about bad drug interactions. Because if Methadone starts having different side effects then that’s a whole different problem.”

                What was she, a doctor? Julia was going on about dosages and how new reactions could be indicative of something and Kady couldn’t stand it. It was almost worse than the silence. “Did you hear that?”

                Julia straightened up, looking around the room. “Hear what?”

                “It sounded almost like there was a pot in here that just called a kettle black. Or maybe it was just the sound of someone telling me about the book they were reading. The book that didn’t have a title because they were too tired to make one up. Or maybe I’m just hearing things.”

                “Fine. Fine,” Julia snapped, glaring at the ceiling.  “I wasn’t reading, I was sleeping.  I heard you and I woke up. So sorry I panic when I hear you cry.”

                “You panicked?” Kady repeated incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s almost like the last time you cried a shitload of people died. “

Shit. Shit, Kady hadn’t even thought about that. She was supposed to be here to help. Maybe she couldn’t quell Julia’s nightmares or erase what happened, but she was supposed to help find Reynard and kill him because maybe that would fix some things. Instead she was making things worse. Fuck. “I know we never really talked about what happened and I really don’t—“ Kady glanced up. “Oh shit, Jules—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Julia said instantly. “I told you that when I brought you home.”

“No, Julia—“

“Forget it. Just, forget I mentioned it. Sleep where you want—“

Kady pushed back her chair, managing to stand. “Julia!”

“I’ll go back to bed—“

“The stove is on fire!”

Julia whipped around to find herself faced with dark smoke billowing out of the eye of the stove. Her eyes widened and she instinctively reached for the pot of boiling milk, yelping and drawing her hand back immediately.

Kady jumped over the counter, smacking the pot away and throwing a damp dishtowel over the burning eye. There wasn’t a real fire underneath, just a lot of smoke from the milk caramelizing on the red hot eye. She turned off the stove and took several deep breaths before looking over at Julia. “You were saying?”

Cradling her burned hand to her chest Julia stared between the stove and Kady for a few seconds before she looked down, her hair hiding her face. A small noise escaped her, a hiccupping sound like a sob caught in her throat. Her shoulders started shaking and she held onto the oven with her good hand.

“Shit, no, Jules, don’t cry,” Kady sighed, taking a step closer to her. “It was just smoke, it’s fine. Is it your hand? How bad is it?”

Julia sniffled and let out another choked noise. “You’re an idiot.”

“Okay, not the response I expected.”

She pulled herself up, flicking her hair back to reveal a small grin. “I’m laughing, you idiot. You jumped over the counter like you were some kind of action movie hero and punched a pot. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. You punched a pot.”

“Was that really stupider than grabbing it?”

“You punched it!”

“Sometimes punching problems solves them,” Kady argued, finding herself grinning just a little. For a few seconds things felt normal again. Julia was laughing and Kady was rolling her eyes at her. It was like it was before when they were going over the spells that Richard had given them. “Come here, let me see your hand, Miss ‘I Grab Hot Pots’.”

Still smiling to herself Julia took a step towards Kady. There was a slight hesitation and she looked at the burn across her palm, her eyes flashing with memory and her smile faltering.

Kady watched her for a moment, unsure if it was a good idea to let Julia remember. “What is it?”

Julia shook her head and blinked quickly. “It’s nothing. No, don’t look at me like that, it’s really nothing. I once tried to make invisible fire. In my apartment. It didn’t really end that well,” she explained.

“You know, you really are the dumbest smart person I know. Go sit on the sofa, I’ll be over there in a minute to wrap up your hand.”

“I need to clean up the milk and—“

Kady waved Julia off, hunting through the drawers for the first aid kit. “No, you need to sit on the sofa and let me wrap your hand up before you hurt yourself worse. Go, sofa, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I can at least help with—“

“You can help by grabbing the blanket out of your stupid little reading nook,” Kady told her. “I’ll take care of the rest of it. Now, go and don’t find a way to hurt yourself between here and the living room.”

Julia hesitated for a minute before rolling her eyes, the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “Yes, ma’am,” she said with fond sarcasm.

As Julia went to grab the blanket Kady managed to find the first aid kit and a roll of paper towels. She cleaned up the milk and threw the scorched pot in the sink, grabbing a clean one out of the dish rack and filling it with water. Maybe they should start a fire every time they got into an argument. It might work for a little while. As Kady twisted her fingers over the pot, bringing the water to a boil, she wondered why Julia hadn’t just used magic to make cocoa in the first place. She popped a diffuser of leaves into the mug, poured the water over top of it, and headed to care for her girlfriend with the first aid kit tucked under her arm.

Julia was propped up in the corner of the sofa, staring down at her hand.  The smile had faded from her lips again and she had a very familiar expression. It was the same one she had any time her mind wandered off to another place and time. Kady paused, watching her and wondering where it was that Julia went to inside her head. Was it back to that day that they summoned Reynard? Was it somewhere else? Somewhere that Kady couldn’t pull her back from?

Kady moved slowly towards the sofa, like she was approaching a timid animal and didn’t want to scare it off. “Here, take this. The smell is about to make me puke,” she said, holding out the steaming mug. “Julia! Take it with the hand that isn’t burned!”

“Oh, right…” Julia blinked, her mind apparently returning to the present. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“You were sure thinking about something. Hand?” Taking Julia’s injured hand Kady looked over the burn. It wasn’t very bad. The skin was red and irritated, but it wasn’t really anything to panic over. Honestly, Julia had probably suffered sunburns worse than this, but Kady was still going to take care of it. Julia’s hand was cold against hers and Kady thought again about how Julia should have at least put on some slippers. “Yeah, I can fix this. Should be fine by morning.”

“What’re you gonna do? Kiss it and make it better?”

That hadn’t been Kady’s plan at all, but plans had a habit of changing. She smiled and leaned down, pressing her lips against the reddened skin and causing Julia to let out another small laugh. “Yup, all better.”

Julia smiled and closed her fingers around Kady’s hand, squeezing slightly. “Remember when you were a kid and that worked to fix everything?”

No, Kady thought. That had never been a solution her mother had offered, but she didn’t tell Julia that. She didn’t want to see that smile slip away again. “Yeah, well, there are some parts of you that I can’t kiss.”

“And I can’t kiss all the hurt parts of you,” Julia said and pursed her lips, looking down. “I want to kiss some parts of you though. A lot of parts, actually. Maybe that’ll help.”

Kady sighed and let her eyes flutter closed. It sounded nice, of course. She missed how things had been before. She missed kissing Julia down her neck, giggling like schoolgirls and trying to keep Richard from hearing them. She missed having Julia curl in close to her at night when they finally settled down, exhausted. She missed waking up to Julia leaving a line of kissed down her stomach and then disappearing under the covers. But, things were different. “Jules, I don’t wanna push you to do anything. I know…I mean after what you went through I know you need time—“

“I’ve had time. I’ve had a lot of time. What I haven’t had…is my girlfriend.”

“Jules—“

“And I know that I’m kind of a lot to deal with. I’ve got shit going on and it’s a lot for anybody,” she said quickly, her eyes downcast as though afraid of seeing Kady’s response. “And I get it if you don’t wanna deal with my shit.”

For the one thousandth time that night Kady wondered why her girlfriend was sometimes the stupidest person on the planet. “God, you’re a fucking moron. Julia, you’re not hard to deal with. I mean, you are. You really, really are. But not for the reasons you think. You’re stubborn, headstrong, smart as hell and dumb as shit.” She paused and shrugged. “And honestly that’s probably kinda why I like you I guess. And I’m not going to leave because your head is fucked up right now. Shit, my head is fucked up. Our fuck up heads go together.”

Julia paused, taking in everything Kady said. Her fingers traced over a scar on the back of Kady’s hand, rubbing over the raised flesh like a worry stone. “It feels like you’re leaving. You’re distant. I’m distant. I don’t know…I don’t know how to close the gap between us,” she admitted, her voice small as if she didn’t want to be heard at all.

But she was heard. Kady heard her and had to silently agree. Sometimes it felt like there was an ocean of space between them. It wasn’t like Kady could hold Julia at night. When the nightmares set in Kady’s grip reminded Julia too much of Reynard’s grip and she would awaken in a panic. Kady felt guilty even touching Julia, feeling her girlfriend tense sometimes even with the gentlest of caresses. Kady wanted, more than anything, to cross that ocean and just be with her Julia. But the waters were rough and Kady couldn’t always swim. “I just don’t want to hurt you.” And as Kady spoke she realised that the way she had been trying to help had done the most damage.

“I’m not a fragile little doll, Kady. I know sometimes…but I don’t want to be alone. I can’t stand being alone. When I wake up and you’re not there I think…I think something awful happened while I was asleep. And I miss waking up and seeing you. I miss holding you and knowing it’s you. I want to be able to know it’s you again. I miss…this. What we’re going right now. You holding my hand and complaining about my tea.”

“Your tea stinks.”

“So do your socks,” Julia countered. 

“Well, I can always take my socks off.”

“Ew, no, your feet stink worse than your socks.” Julia paused again, looking down at their intertwined hands. “And I miss your stinky feet.”

“My feet don’t smell that bad. At least they aren’t blocks of ice.” Kady hesitated before reaching over, putting her free arm around Julia’s shoulders.

Julia tense, drawing in a sharp breath and Kady almost pulled away. Before she had to chance to draw back, however, Julia rested her head on Kady’s shoulder, putting her tea on the side table and closing her eyes.  She seemed to just melt for a moment, letting all her weight rest on Kady. “Is this okay?”

Kady gave a small nod and pulled the blanket over both of them, making sure Julia was safely tucked in and warm. “If you’re okay then…yeah, this is okay. Just don’t put your cold feet on me in the middle of the night or I’ll put one of my socks on your face.”

Julia gave a small laugh and curled closer into Kady. “Fine, fine. Just…just don’t move, okay?”

They were still on the sofa and Kady watched as Julia’s breathing evened out and she drifted off to sleep. There was no way of knowing when they nightmares would come or how bad they would be. Kady decided that it wasn’t something she could worry about. Worrying wouldn’t solve anything. They were both fucked up and there was no way that they could fix that. There wasn’t a spell to repair the parts of their brains affected by the things that had happened to them. The memories would remain and the nightmares and fear weren’t stopping anytime soon. But, as Kady let her eyes close and felt Julia’s breath against her neck, she decided that if she was going to be fucked up then there was no one else she would rather be fucked up with.

 


End file.
